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Small Victories
"Action Stations! Action Stations! All hands to action stations. Enemy contacts to port! Close all red openings. All pilots man your craft, gunners to your stations. Action Stations! Action Stations!" The ship sprang into life as personnel rushed to where they should be. Orders were shouted on the bridge, evasive maneuvres executed and shields raised, main guns charged and fighters ordered to scramble. The ship had been caught off guard, startled by the sudden appearance of hundreds of unidentified RADAR contacts like its companions in the Allegiance fleet. The blaring of the battlestations alarm very quickly shattered the peace that had existed just a few moments previously. A tall, man half jogged, half ran down the metal hallway. Behind him, several others followed, each clad in the same armour and moving as one down the corridor. Their dull grey armour shone in the harsh, artificial light of the corridor. Every two metres or so, a bulkhead broke the otherwise uniform wall of riveted metal. A deep, low rumble emanated throughout the hallway as the ship was struck for the first time. At that moment the hallway rocked slightly, but no one lost their balance. The group moved to one side to allow a row of heavily armed marines and a navy officer past, hurrying to where they needed to be. The first man pulled his pistol from its magnetic holster on his thigh. He released the magazine and let it slide partially out into his open palm. Sure it was loaded, he slid it back in with a click and replaced it at his side. It was unlikely that he would need it, but he was a man of habit and it didn’t hurt to be prepared. His stomach churned with anticipation or anxiety, he couldn’t tell which. The familiar feeling that, in an hour or so, he might be dead, crept up on him. It never failed to surprise him with its potency, no matter how many missions he flew. Pilots had the highest mortality rates of any Allegiance servicemen; a fact not lost on Flight Sergeant Reuben Woods. Woods reached a large mechanical door, which slid smoothly open with a whir. The pilots followed him into an average-sized room with another great closed hatch in the far wall. Cables, equipment and tools were scattered around the wall’s edge, and a conveyor belt-like machine lined with belts of huge calibre cannon rounds descended from the ceiling. In the centre of the room, a craft small by fighter standards, though still large enough to occupy a sizeable section of the room, sat ready for combat. “She ready to go?” asked Reuben to the tech in the room. “Fueled and ready to fly sir,” he replied. “I fixed the problem in the port alieron but the air intake’s still a bit dodgy. Fly safe out there, yeah?” Reuben only dipped his head slightly. The tech must have seen so many pilots go out and not return that after a while, it just didn’t matter. As the tech signalled the ammunition belt to retract using his neural interface, and pulled out and sealed the fuel line, Reuben put his hands on his hips, looking slightly lost. Suddenly he turned around and said, “Well? What are you all waiting for? Get to your ships!” The other pilots began to leave through a door on the right side of the room, which led through into the adjacent hangar and then onto a whole row of them. “Oh,” he added, just as the first one departed, “good luck.” The door slid quickly shut after them, and the tech had vanished already, having about a dozen or so more ships to prep he guessed. Reuben felt strangely alone as he clambered into his cockpit once again, and slid his flight helmet over his face. He flicked a trio of switches and his Flashfighter awoke. With a flicker of his mind, he commanded the large hatch in front of him to open. The top and bottom halves were pulled apart, slowly flooding the room with the artificial light of the flight deck. Now that the large blast door was open, Reuben was met with a familiar sight; his small room was one alcove of hundreds, embedded into the walls of a huge hangar. Below, dozens of other fighters leapt into battle. With a flicker of his mind, Reuben initiated the depressurisation process. Three warning tones sounded and the doors were locked shut with a clang. The green holographic banner above the now-open hatch turned red, signaling that the room was about to be depressurised. Two short audible warnings were heard, followed by a higher-pitched one. The forcefield door deactivated and the room depressurised. Reuben gently lifted his fighter off the ground with the manual controls. It could be easily done with his neural interface, like how most did it. Woods preferred to fly the old-fashioned way, with his hands; the way he was trained. “Flight Control from Sierra Leader, request go for launch,” spoke Reuben into his helmet comm. There was a brief pause as the operator checked the alcove number of Reuben’s fighter and if it was safe to launch. “Roger that Sierra Leader, you are go for launch. Good luck.” They’d need it. Category:Stories